# EMERGE: Early Markers of Expressive and Receptive (language) Growth in Ethnically diverse autistic toddlers

> **NIH NIH R56** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2023 · $661,734

## Abstract

PROJECT ABSTRACT
The majority of 18-24-month-old autistic children have no words, demonstrating significant delays in their
language development, a leading source of concern that often brings them to the attention of physicians or
other professionals in community settings91,92. About half of these children continue to show significant
language delay, speaking no words at 30-33 months2 and exhibiting delays in language greater than
expected for their nonverbal cognitive age2. The period of development between 18-30 months is critical for
language learning, coinciding with the period of time parents note differences in their children’s
development93. We do not understand why some children begin to use words and others do not but speaking
early (before 36 months) has long-lasting and cascading effects on development94,95. This may be especially
true for low income, racially and ethnically diverse children who are diagnosed later, and when diagnosed,
often have lower cognitive/intellectual abilities8. Starting out with such disadvantage can limit opportunities for
children, tracking them into specialized and segregated settings that result in poorer outcomes overall.
Understanding why language outcomes diverge over this critical language learning window, especially for
economically disadvantaged children and/or those from historically marginalized groups, is essential to
optimize the targets and timing of early, effective interventions.
Therefore, a major gap in our knowledge concerns the measures and timing of when we can predict
spoken language outcomes of young children with autism, especially in historically marginalized and
minoritized populations. To explore the vast heterogeneity in language outcomes, it will be necessary to
deeply phenotype children using a range of concurrent neural and behavioral markers of spoken language and
examine how these changes progress over time. This study will be the first to collect simultaneous social
communication, language, sensory, motor development, and neural activity (via remote EEG) measures in the
homes of families who have typically not been engaged in research studies, which we will do at three distinct
times over the 18-30-month window of development. Participants include 132 18-month-old toddlers with
autism who screen as having no words at study start. Our outcome will be the total number of novel words on
a language sample. This study has the potential to dramatically improve our understanding of language
growth among developmentally delayed, historically underrepresented, autistic toddlers. It also addresses a
high priority need of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Council and NIH, which includes a focus on
minimally verbal, intellectually disabled children and community samples of historically marginalized and
minoritized populations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10862026
- **Project number:** 1R56DC021174-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Brian Antonio Boyd
- **Activity code:** R56 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $661,734
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2023-08-04 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10862026

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10862026, EMERGE: Early Markers of Expressive and Receptive (language) Growth in Ethnically diverse autistic toddlers (1R56DC021174-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10862026. Licensed CC0.

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